Wizard

The primary nuking class; these casters are able to deal catastrophic damage to enemies over a very short time from a distance, particularly with their Manaburn skill, although the length of encounters often makes manaburn inefficient to use. Wizards have transportation spells that facilitate group travel to particular locations, including designated "safe spots" when things go bad for the whole group. Wizards direct damage spells are generally from the fire, frost, and magic schools.

Times certainly change, don't they? Since I last sat down and wrote a wizard guide, not so much has happened on the wizard front I suppose, but any of us who have stuck with our guns since the advent of SoD and its plethora of new toys probably has learned a few things since then. I know I have, and as usual, I will gladly share my knowledge with anyone who asks --- regardless of guild affiliation or even server. Send me a tell anytime.

That said, let's get started.

To reiterate this guide's predecessor's most valuable point --- to be a good wizard, you must be a driven wizard. An aggressive wizard. If you don't have aspirations (Why are you in a raiding guild if you don't?) or the constant desire to do your best, you obviously won't.

However, just because you desire to do your best doesn't mean you are actually doing your best. You need knowledge and research and to put thought into your actions. This is a short list of what works for me. There are probably a few ways that work, but there are endless ways that don't. Even the generic "best methods" have exceptions and are further modified by specific events. The obvious bottom line is, always be ready to adapt. Always consider your options, during battle and before.

And draw your fun from that.

That, to me, is why even doing the same events a hundred times never gets boring.

Enough of my blathering. On with the show.

The Method to the Madness ---- Spell Lineup and Usage

First of all, a point of note is that this setup assumes that you'll be doing mostly long (2 min+ duration) fights and do not necessarily have a 40k mana pool.

Wildmagic is KEY. A LOT of wizards do not have Wildmagic Burst (Level 76) because they do not know how to get it and/or didn't bother.

The easiest way to obtain this spell is by killing Vampires in the Vampire Caves in Loping Plains (unless you've completed the Soulbleeder raid; keep reading). It is the cave directly southeast of the Hills of Shade zoneline. In SoF, specific rank 1 spells can only drop in certain places, but almost all of them have a single spot where they will drop phenomenally more often than anywhere else. The Vampires of LP are your only chance to get this spell unless you farm the faction for rank 2 (guh) OR have all prerequisites for rank 3.

To get rank 3 you must have completed the raid Bimbalicus the Soulbleeder, and have the following Hills of Shade tasks completed:

You must keep your TWO highest-level Wildmagic spells up at the same time, as well as your TWO highest-level Ethereal Fire spells, and Ethereal Iceblight. Alternately you can use Chaos Combusion+Ethereal Iceblight/Combustion+Wildmagic Blast but dual wildmagics is best.

Wildmagic is a wizard's greatest spell line: It can crit over 20k for nearly free after preservations. Better yet, its cast time is 0.8 seconds, and multiple spells of the same line are not recast-linked, so you can chain cast them indefinetly (and you'll never run out of mana). This alone puts out a significant amount of damage (~4kdps), but more importantly, it will set off your Gifts of Mana like firecrackers. This means you are able to cast Ethereal spells, your biggest damage ability, very often in comparison to using other spells. Beyond that, you'll also get a ton of Mana Reiteration procs from it if an enchanter is in your group, which can add a rather astounding amount of damage over time (even considering the MR nerf). Potions of Resonant Elemental will also get max benefit from this setup.

You must always be careful to note which type of Gift of Mana just went off. You must remember that you are going to be using two different level ranges of spells. It can get confusing if you're not used to it. This is an optimal spell lineup:1) Wildmagic Burst2) Ethereal Incineration3) Wildmagic Blast4) Ethereal Combustion5) Flashblaze6) Serene Harvest7) Twincast8) Ethereal Iceblight9) Mindfreeze10) Concussion11) Cloudburst Levin12) Malediction of Havoc

So, you're pairing up your level ranges on the top. 80, 80, 85, 85. If Wildmagic sets off Gift of Mana you just have to click right below it to use it with the correct Ethereal nuke. Easy. Painless. Well, not for the mob.

Quote:

Velly sez, "Obviously if the fight isn't THAT long and you do have a big mana pool you don't have to keep doing this: You DO want to spend all of your mana by the end of the fight as a general rule, but this assumes the desire for maximum efficiency. These days a high-mana wizard can safely largely ignore Wildmagic Burst on fights under eh, five minutes, in favor of ethereal chains, but find what works for you. Tips on knowing what to do when can be found later in this document."

Why is all this confusing stuff necessary? Because of the ABSOLUTE most important part about being a great sustained damage dealer: You must never stop casting even for a second. Even milliseconds add up. If you're REALLY trying to squeeze in all you can get, there can be no waiting involved. Keep clicking.

Using instant nukes on anything except trash mobs is not that great, usually, unless a mob is spell slowing. Instant nukes are indeed grand on trash, but on the main targets they're usually more of a mana sink than anything. Their ratio is exactly half the mana and half the damage as spells of the Ethereal line. Their speed becomes fairly moot on something with millions of hp. Chain casting Cloudburst Levin will net you about 5kdps if you can sustain it but its not good bang for the buck unless you have to do it. A good example is if you accidentally get spell slowed by Discordant Corruptors in Tower event 5, when Imta spell slows you for event 4 (not a big deal) and when Pallorax spell slows (good to keep it memmed there for sure).

Twincast is best used with very high-damage nukes. Your options will be listed in the Burn Strategies section.

Serene Harvest should be used as often as possible when not able to nuke. The only exception is if the fight is really long. Timing is very important. Harvesting mid-fight is, generally, BAD. Tried and absolutely true, the 18 seconds you lose harvesting in the middle of a mob is 18 seconds you're not nuking and you'll be using most if not all of the mana you just harvested trying to compensate for those 18 seconds. Sometimes you just can't avoid it (Brekt, event 4, whatever.) of course. As long as you remember you're losing 18 seconds, trust your judgement and it's probably fine.

If you know there's about to be a 20 second pause where you don't need to cast anything and you're not full mana, hit a harvest or two (or three! With Forceful Rejuvination). Best time. Very cool.

Assuming you'll go straight to more trash plowing after an event in some raid scenarios, it's not a bad idea to use harvest if it's up right after the event is won.

If there's a bard in your group click the songs off like mad, run out of range, or ask them to stop the songs for a moment while you harvest. Harvest is very bugged but bard songs are the biggest cause of its failiure.

Boss Combat Tip

An important rule of thumb useful for events which require the death of a main target is to keep your mana pool near the boss's health pool. Doing this isn't crucial, but it can be helpful for standard fights. Obviously many exceptions apply, such as burn time, if you'll be able to harvest mid-fight, etc, but loosely following the guideline helps assure that you don't run out of mana too early, or too late to burn it all.

Regulating mana based on health assures that you'll be out of mana right on time (on the win), which is a primary objective of any fight that you're performing a DPS role in. Wildmagic's inexpensiveness is awesome for mana regulation before or after a burn.

When DPS burn is called on a boss, if the boss is fairly low in health you can do your burn routine until 20% mana depending on how things are going and then finish out the fight chaining Wildmagics. You'll have enough mana left to use Ethereal nukes anytime GoM procs, and can dump any leftovers below 10% of its life.

Author's Note:

I am, for a moment, going to return to my priority point: A good wizard is going to be making a lot of decisions. Here's some food for thought as to handling events:

What I personally do more often than not is hit silent casting and then full burn (details laid out later), at the beginning of a fight. I am in a minority because doing so can occasionally risk you not being able to appropriately burn when burn is called. However, that isn't a huge problem if you're accustomed to the event, and it does net the best overall DPS. The reason is that if you burn from the very start, at the very least your Twincast will be up again by the end of the fight for most main events. Wizards who wait to burn for the burn call can be sure they're burning at the appropriate time, but their overall DPS plummets considerably unless the fight literally lasts under four minutes.

It's a calculated risk. Usually "burn" will come when Twincast is already up again so there's not much danger in it. You'll learn timing as you learn events. I'll give an example: what I do on Pallorax.

Usually he dies in under 10 minutes except sometimes on hard mode. Assume I'm doing normal.

I know that my Spire won't be back up by the end of the fight. Nor will silent casting. I'll toss a mindfreeze and start with some low damage pot shots (Wildmagic), toss a quick concussion, pop twincast (just twincast) and rail away at about 95% if aggro is stable. I harvest everytime he runs and it's up so I won't run out of mana. Twincast (rk.3) will be up again around 55% - I know this from experience. As soon as it pops and I'm sure I'll get its full duration before Pallorax goes invulnerable I'll use it again.

I won't use it below 40% because it won't be up for 20. By 20, I've saved my spire and silent casting. Oh no! Twincast isn't up again just yet. But I have a good feeling it's about to pop. It will definitely pop before my Spire is over. I go ahead and use silent casting and spire and start burning. Yay! Twincast is up before spire is over like I thought. I've now gotten the full usage out of my spire - I stacked it with twincast, and My Pal Pall definitely won't die before my spire is down. I've also taken full advantage of his mana regen buff and hit Frenzied Devastation when my mana pool hit 35%+ (and during twincast).

No doubt, I've fit in as much damage as I could on that event.

Let's pat ourselves on the back and move on.

Which AAs Are (Very) Good To Have And When To Use Them

Max Spell Casting FuryMax Gift of ManaMax Improved Familiar (Some use Ro's with no bard - I do not ever use it, as I actively use Ethereal Iceblight which makes it worthless to me.)Max Destructive FuryMax Spellcasting Sublety (Rank 7 is sufficient prior to 85, but not after.)Max Quick DamageMax Silent CastingMax Hastened Silent Casting (Makes SC recast 12 mins. Extremely useful.)(If you have a Kiss or Staunch especially) Frenzied Devastation 3Fury of RoFirst and Second Spire of Arcanum (Third's moot with the Wildmagic strat. We DPS burn, we don't need no weeniewuss mana pres.)Twincast 3Group Perfected InvisibilityGroup Perfected LevitationSpell Casting Reinforcement/Mastery/Artistry (Makes Twincast last longer.)Pyromancy (Low priority but one day you won't have an enchanter and the DoT/Fire debuff for the whole raid to enjoy is lovely. Also, plans are in the works to make it stack with MR, supposedly.)Quickened Harvest of DruzzilForce of Will

- Improved Familiar should be used always. It adds 18% to crits at max rank, 1500 mana pool, 18 mana regen, reduces fizzle rate, and just for posterity a bunch of resists and see invis. The resists are useful anyhow, if you're against a mob which debuffs resists. Resists are capped, but if a mob has a -60 resist debuff and that resist is 60 points above capped, that part of their spell doesn't work. Spiff.

- Fury of Ro's difference seems subtle at times, but its impact is rather significant. The small damage per cast it adds (500 damage per fire spell) is a sizable DPS boost by the time the buff fades. It lasts 5 minutes and casts instantly. Reuse: 30 minutes.

- Spires are especially great when combined with Twincast. Each spire gives you a 1 minute duration buff. Using one disables them all, but recast is only 10 minutes and they will stack with any other effects you have going such as Fury of Ro.

First Spire of Arcanum (Crit %) is the "steady burn" spire.Second Spire of Arcanum (+ Crit Damage) is the "heavy burn", "gambling" spire and is the best to use in my opinion.

Quote:

Velly sez, "Which spire to use is mostly a matter of personal preference I suppose. Second Spire should always be used if Frenzied Devastation is activated because First Spire will not stack with FD's 60% crit rate. Really though, I've had instances where with First Spire I didn't crit at all. At the same time, with Second Spire I've had the same problem, but the reason Second Spire really shines is because it increases your damage potential whereas First Spire does not. By that, I mean if you get lucky and crit most hits during Second Spire, you will do vastly more damage than you would do if you critted all of your First Spire hits.

- Silent Casting - The only way you're going to die when this is active is from an AE, event mechanic, or if the rest of the raid wipes on your head. Use with Twincast or you'll be tanking.

- Pyromancy - Since it doesn't stack with Mana Reiteration it's a really stinky raid tool but on those rare occasions there's no enchanter handy it's good to have. 1500/tick DoT on fire spell proc, 36 seconds, -60 to the mob's fire resist. If you're having bad resist problems you can run oor of the enchanter's MR aura and cast Pyro quickly and try to make it proc on the mob if your spells are just flat not hardly landing at all - to help you and the raid - but this kind of situation's extremely rare. They recently made it so this will proc off of Wildmagic fire hits. Neat.

- Force of Will is nice to do a little extra damage on the side. Low priority as it hardly adds a decent amount of damage, but since it's an AA and very fast casting you can throw it in between spellcasts and not miss a beat. Honestly though I've just found it to be really good for trash and groups - if it gets the killshot, you can get the full 800 mana boost if your Arcane Overkill is maxed. It's an ok pull tool too, even for summoners. It doesn't do enough damage to make most summoners summon. Though um, I wouldn't pull on a raid. Anyway...

Burn Strats

Typical Burn

First click your epic.Focus of Arcanum.Fury of Ro.Second Spire of Arcanum.Silent Casting.Twincast.Chain Ethereal Incineration and Iceblight.

Quote:

Very Useful Tip:

Velly sez, "I've found that the biggest hurt to my DPS is sometimes just having to click all of that on the charge command. To combat this annoyance I made a hotkey:

Click your epic (and your staff of elemental flux if you like), then that key, then twincast. Burning made easy... er.

Other

I used to have other burning strats listed here but time and the phasing out of an all-fire ethereal chain has made the "max burn" strat useless, and the "efficient" burn speaks for itself -- if near completely out of mana just Wildmagic chain your way through a twincast round. The archaic version of this guide with them included is still on this board -- page 2.

Other General Wizard Tips

Don't let any wizard ever tell you that Malediction of Havoc is crap because there are those that chant it. When it first came out it blanked out spell gems a couple seconds but it does not have any restriction anymore. It casts quick, often does similar damage to Ethereals, and gives you a chance at not only proccing Twincast (the buff, not a single blow) but also gives a chance to cast Forceful Rejuvination.

It's bad to use on trash sometimes (you'll be tempted to use a twincast on trash and get yourself whumped and wish you had used it on an event mob if it does go off during trash). In groups you won't want to use it as your first cast spell for the same reason. It's great to cast right after Harvest. It's also good to cast it right before you use Forceful Rejuvination because FR will pop the gem. (Yep, you get to cast it twice if the spell itself procs FR.)

Telajara isn't good to use on raids per se but it's a very underrated group spell. 8 second stun on an even con or below... gives plenty of time for a concussion and whatever else. I just like any excuse to say the naysayers are wrong about it. 'Cause they are.

Beware Beam of Displacement --- it breaks root (Does a small DD.)

Cloudburst Levin is awesome for farming and tanking since it can't be interrupted. If you're concerned about its mana consumption (major farming of greens) and are overkilling stuff a lot, you can mem Cloudburst Strike along with it.

Netherstep is awesome for avoiding see invis aggro sometimes. I use it when soloing Locating the Statue (Katta mission) for faction for people and avoid all SI aggro on the way to the spot with it. Fun stuff.

Never use Claw of Gorenaire, Crystallizing Circle (Decent idea, bad mechanics.), or Self-Immolation (until they fix it. It hits you for 9.5k per target you hit even if they're grey.).

Mindfreeze is underrated. Seriously. Use it.

When you get your Axiom _____ clickie robe, it's best to cast an Ethereal and then Klixcxyk's Fire with it, rinse repeat. This way it slows down mana consumption and you'll get the best use out of it. Reason is, the Axiom line won't lose charges if you use an instant or an ethereal while it's clicked. If you use a charge on Wildmagic you wasted it. It's fine to use with Malediction of Havoc. Make sure you click the robe while preferably not using a spire or whatever because Klix isn't exemplary damage so there's no use in trying to augment it when you could be chaining ethereals during a spire instead. Also, it would suck if you click it when your mana is too low, because if you do, you'll be stuck using some of the charges on Wildmagic. Not good.

Tonic of Resonant Elemental is better to use than Resonant Fire using my strategies.